CMS Open Payments

General description

1. Database primary purpose - To promote a more transparent and accountable healthcare system by helping consumers understand the financial relationships between pharmaceutical and medical device industries, physicians, non-physician practitioners (NPP) and teaching hospitals. The publicly accessible database provides data of payments that reporting entities, including drug and medical device companies, make to covered recipients like physicians.
2. Overall data type - Hospital expenditures, providers payment
3. Dataset type - Longitudinal
4. Data source - Claims. Applicable manufacturers and applicable GPOs must enter detailed information about payments, other transfers of value, or investment interests into the CMS Open Payments system. These payments, other transfers of value, and ownership or investment interests are categorized into three payment types: (1) General payments: payments or other transfers of value made that are not in connection with a research agreement or research protocol; (2) research payments: payments or other transfers of value made in connection with a research agreement or research protocol; and (3) physician ownership or Investment Interest Information: information about physicians who hold an ownership or investment interest in an applicable manufacturer or applicable GPO or who have an immediate family member holding such interest.
5. Data level - Provider level
6. Geographic location of the data collection sites - United States
7. Sponsor, manager, or home institution - Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
8. Date range - 2015 - 2021
9. Geolocation data - Zip code, county, city, province, country
10. Dates - Date of payment, payment publication date,
11. Hospital identifiers - Unique identifier receiving the payment or transfer value
12. Physician identifiers - Unique identifier for covered recipient physician or covered recipient non-physician, National Provider Identifiers (NPIs) (from 2021)
13. Longitudinal tracking - Track teaching hospitals and providers using the above-mentioned identifiers
14. Financial variables - total amount of payment and investiment, value of interest
15. Clinical areas of interest - all
16. Number of records - Open Payments Program Year 2021 (January 1, 2021 – December 31, 2021) includes 12.10 million published records totaling $10.90 billion in payments and other transfers of value that reporting entities made to covered recipients
17. Variables that are uniquely present in this dataset - Payments made by drug and medical device companies to physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, certified registered nurse anesthetists and anesthesiologist assistants, certified nurse midwives, and teaching hospitals
18. Database caveats and limitations - (1) Certain payments or other transfers of value are excluded from reporting, such as product samples and educational materials intended for patient use. Records of such payments and other transfers of value should not be submitted to the Open Payments system. (2) Payment records are only accepted by the Open Payments system if they are both successfully validated and successfully matched to a valid physician, NPP or teaching hospital.
19. Other - Note that CMS does not comment on what relationships may be beneficial or potential conflicts of interest. CMS publishes the data attested to by reporting entities. The data is open to individual interpretation.

Applicable methods

1. Exploratory analysis (1, 2, 3)
2. Association methods, such as regression analysis (4), Pearson correlation coefficient (5), Poisson's regressions (6)
3. Factor analysis (7)

High-impact designs

1. Examine the association of physician network-level position among peers and the acceptance of drug-related promotional payments (6)

2. Evaluate whether gender disparities exist in relationships between pharmaceutical and/or medical device industries and academic specialties (8)

3. Analyze the nature and extent of industry payments (9)

Data dictionary

To access the CMS Open Payments data dictionary, click here

Variable categories

1. Recipient personal information (e.g., name, address, zip code)
2. Practitioner's information (e.g., specialty, primary type of medicine)
3. Products (i.e., drug or biological device or medical supplies)
4. Covered or non-covered indicators
5. Payment (e.g., total amount of payment or other transfer value, amount the physician or immediate family member has invested in the applicable manufacturer, cumulative value of ownership or investment interest held by the physician or immediate family member in the applicable manufacturer)

Linkage to other datasets

• Linkages can be established for any dataset that might have geolocation data (zip code) or provider identifier (NPI)